Issue 141 - Voluntaryist.com

Are Taxes Theft?
November 8, 2007
The Honorable Clarence Thomas
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme
Court
1 First Street NE
Washington, DC 20543
Dear Justice Clarence Thomas:
I recently read (and very much enjoyed) an interview in Hillsdale College’s IMPRIMIS (October
2007) about your new book, MY GRANDFATHER’S
SON. I was very much impressed with two passages
in that interview.
The first regarded the relationship between freedom and responsibility:
What my grandfather believed was that people
have their responsibilities, and if they are left
alone to fulfill their responsibilities, that is
freedom. [p. 5]
The second concerned his attitude toward “the
idea of taxation [which] offended him”:
My first ideas about taxation had to do with the
fact that we worked for everything we had. My
grandfather would give whatever he could to
relatives who needed it - to the elderly, to people
with lots of kids, to people who had fallen on
hard times. We’d harvest food and take it to folks
who needed it. But the idea of someone coming
and exacting from us what we had worked for,
he was offended at that idea. [p. 3]
Did your grandfather ever make a connection
between these two observations? Would he have
thought that taxation violated the idea of his being
“left alone” to fulfill his responsibilities? Did the fact
that he had less property after being “taxed” mean
that he couldn’t fulfill his responsibilities (as well as
if he had been allowed to keep all his property)?
The reason I ask these questions is because I look
upon taxation as theft, and contrary to the moral
commandment “Thou shalt not steal.”
Do you think your grandfather would have agreed
with me?
Sincerely,
Carl Watner
[Justice Thomas acknowledged receiving my letter
on February 19, 2008. In a hand-written addition to
that acknowledgement he added: “I will only say that
my grandfather felt very strongly that one should
keep the fruits of his labor.”]
I ... describe[d] the fierce pride of the [mountain] people; their self-reliance and love of
liberty; the rebellion against taxation and all
government restrictions or even “benefits”;
how out of centuries of tyranny they had
learned the lesson well that for every benefit,
a freedom must always be surrendered.
—Catherine Marshall, CHRISTY
(1967), Chapter Thirty-four.
P.O. Box 275 • Gramling, South Carolina 29348
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Whole Number 141
Voluntaryism
“If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.”
By Carl Watner
[The following article was posted as the entry for
“Voluntaryism” at www.wikipedia.org in late March
2008.]
This article is about the philosophy of life that
holds that everything that is invasive and coercive, including Government, is evil and ought to be
abandoned, and that mankind ought to embrace the
Voluntary system, which includes all that is nongovernmental and non-compulsory, in other words
all that people do for themselves, their neighbors, and
their posterity, of their own free will.
Voluntaryism is the doctrine that association
among people should only be by mutual consent. It
represents a means, and end, and an insight. Voluntaryism does not argue for the specific form that
voluntary arrangements will take, only that force be
abandoned so that individuals in society may flourish. Since voluntaryists hold that the means must be
consistent with the end, the goal of an all voluntary
society must be sought voluntarily. People cannot be
coerced into freedom. Hence, voluntaryists advocate
the use of the free market, education, persuasion, and
non-violent resistance as the primary ways to change
people’s ideas about the State and their behavior toward it. The voluntaryist insight that all tyranny and
governments are grounded upon popular acceptance,
explains why voluntary means are sufficient and, in
fact, the only way to attain a voluntaryist society.
Overview
Voluntaryism is grounded on two axioms. First,
the self-ownership axiom holds that each person is
and ought to be in control of their own mind, body,
and soul. Second, the homesteading axiom holds that
each person by the application of his or her own labor
to un-owned resources thereby becomes its rightful
and legitimate owner.
It is a commonplace observation that human action represents behavior aiming at an improvement
over the current state of affairs (from the individual
actor’s point of view). Otherwise, that person would
not initiate action to bring about change. Therefore,
every market transaction is intended to be (and
normally achieves) an improvement in satisfaction,
and benefits both parties to the exchange. Thus, both
parties to a trade improve their state of affairs. On
the free and unhampered market this occurs millions
and millions of time each day. Its cumulative effect is
the prosperity and high standard of living that people
experience in a free market economy. Government
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intervention and central planning (based on compulsion) can only force some people to do what they
would otherwise not choose to do, and thereby lessens
their satisfaction and impedes economic progress.
Voluntaryists argue that although certain goods
and services are necessary to human survival, it is
not necessary that they be provided by the government. Voluntaryists oppose the State because it uses
coercive means in the collection of revenues and in
outlawing would-be service providers. It is impossible
to plant the seed of coercion and then reap the fruits
of voluntaryism. The coercionist always proposes
to compel people to do something they ordinarily
wouldn’t do, usually by passing laws or electing
people to office. These laws and officials ultimately
depend upon physical violence to enforce their wills.
Voluntary means, such as non-violent resistance, for
example, violate no one’s rights. Voluntaryism does
not require of people that they violently overthrow
the government or use the electoral process to change
it; it merely requires that they cease to support their
government and obey its orders, whereupon it will
fall of its own dead weight.
Voluntaryism and Anarchism
Libertarian theory, relying upon the self-ownership and homesteading axioms, condemns all invasive
acts and rejects the initiation of violence. Anarchists,
in particular, assert that the State acts aggressively
when it engages in taxation and coercively monopolizes the provision of certain public services such as
the roads, courts, police, and armed forces. It is this
anarchist insight into the nature of the State - that
the State is inherently and necessarily an invasive
institution - which distinguishes the anarchist from
other libertarians.
By this definition, voluntaryists are clearly peaceful anarchists. Many late 20th and early 21st Century
voluntaryists based their thinking upon the ideas of
Murray Rothbard and Robert LeFevre, who rejected
the concept of “limited” government. Every government “presumes to establish a compulsory monopoly
of defense (police and courts) service over some geographical area. So that individual property-owners
who prefer to subscribe to another defense company
within that area are not allowed to do so.” Also,
every government obtains its income by stealing,
euphemistically labeled “taxation.” “All governments,
however limited they may be otherwise, commit at
least these two fundamental crimes against liberty
and property.” [1]
What especially distinguishes voluntaryists from
continued on page 3
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Editor: Carl Watner
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Moral Challenge II
By Carl Watner
I am getting increasingly frustrated (as I write
this it is August 2007) because so very few seem to
comprehend my moral argument that taxation is
theft. Even members of my own family don’t seem to
get it. It appears to me that there are two components
to the argument that taxation is theft.
First is the moral argument: If you define theft as
the taking of a person’s property against their will,
it ought to be perfectly straightforward to conclude
that unless taxes are voluntary, it must be theft
when the government collects taxes under penalty
of imprisonment or confiscation of property. It might
be plausible to argue that taxes are theft, but that
they require an exemption from the general social
prohibition against stealing. But so far, no one I have
argued with has explained why taxation is a morally
justified form of theft. They simply argue that taxes
are not theft because the government is owed the
money. Government is owed the money because it
has provided some sort of protection service. Thus,
when the government coercively demands taxes from
its citizens, it is simply being reimbursed for the
service it has provided.
Second is the practical argument: Most people
believe that if taxes were voluntary, then government
would shrivel up and die. If they are religious, they
argue that God couldn’t have willed thievery. If they
take a secular view, they simply believe that government wouldn’t have the money to support itself. “But
government,” they argue, “is a necessary component
of human society.” Since government “must” have
money to exist, its income (taxes) can’t be theft.
One way I have tried to approach the general
argument that “taxation is theft” is to admit that
human beings “need” protection services, just as they
“need” food, shelter and clothing. The question that
then must be answered is: How is that protection to
be provided? In the case of food, shelter, and clothing
we have ample proof that the voluntary provision of
these goods and services is possible. Why must the
provision of protection be an exception?
It appears that most people cannot get past “what
is seen and not seen.” They “see” only what exists.
They cannot even begin to imagine the free market
provision of protection services because they have
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“Look at something and see what is really
there, not what you think is there.”
been indoctrinated by both Church and State to believe that these services must be (and can only be)
provided by a coercive, monopolistic government.
What they don’t stop to think about is that if people
weren’t forced to pay taxes, they (the people, the
citizens) would have ample funds to supply themselves with protection. If people were not coerced into
paying for government’s high-priced and inefficient
monopoly protection they could turn to alternative
sources of protection. I am sure that variants of
protection would come into being which we cannot
even imagine or dream of now. Witness all the other
miracles of the free market. Who could have dreamed
of, a hundred years ago, all the ways electricity is
utilized today, or the advent of plastics, nylons, or
computers. Imagine what protection services might
be offered if government was not there to monopolize
its production and stifle both invention and competition. But really, the practicality of the market provision of protection is irrelevant to the moral question.
Was plantation slavery in the South justified because
slaves were the only means of harvesting cotton?
Many people admit that much of what passes for
taxation today is theft, but they still cannot get past
the idea that some amount of taxation is “just and
proper.” It reminds me of the argument for the “just”
price on the market. The only fair price is what a willing buyer and seller agree on; and it is only fair at the
time and place where they decide to trade. The only
possible way to determine a “just” tax is in the same
manner. How could government know how much
protection people “need”? Let market purchasers of
protection services buy what services they want, at
what prices they deem advantageous to themselves.
This is the only way to truly determine how much
protection we (as a society) should have. The only
way to find out how much government is necessary
is to see how much government people are willing
to pay for - which means making their contributions
to government voluntary. When people and citizens
are ready to apply the general social prohibition
against stealing to the government itself, then we
(as a society) will have truly reached the realization
that “taxes are theft.”
Those who are silent in the face of stealing
become partners of the thief. “Those who are
silent in the face of murder—become partners
of the killer. Those who do not condemn—
approve.”
—Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, from her “Protest” (1942) attempting to alert the world
to the atrocities taking place in the Warsaw
ghetto.
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voluntarily.
Objection 3: If there were no government, what
would prevent criminals from taking over control of
society?
Answer: First of all, voluntaryists would point out
that criminals have taken over control of our society.
It is only the fact that our criminal governors have
so legitimated themselves in the eyes of most people
that they are no longer considered criminal.
The existence of a peaceful society depends upon
the fact that the large majority of people residing
therein respect other people and their property. In
the absence of coercive government to “protect” these
peaceful people, there would be private defense and
mutual protection agencies, voluntarily funded, to
protect people from would-be aggressors. Each patron
would contract for the level of protection he or she
desired and could afford. In such a society, sureties
and insurance companies would probably provide a
great deal of protection, since they would have the
most to lose from destruction and theft of property
and life. Sureties or bonding companies would ultimately be responsible for the good behavior of those
they covered.
Objection 4: Who would pay for the roads?
Answer: Those who use them and require their
existence. Although roads have been a government
monopoly throughout much of history, there is much
historical evidence that roads could built and operated on a for-profit basis. Government monopolization
and control of the roads has led to many inefficiencies,
deaths, and environmental destruction. [14]
Objection 5: Is it right that voluntaryists benefit from
government services and yet do not wish to pay for
them?
Answer: Voluntaryists recognize that there is no such
thing as a free lunch. They are not asking for government services in the first place. Governments by their
coercive provision of certain services eliminates the
voluntaryist’s range of choice among providers. The
voluntaryist may need to know “what time it is,” but
that doesn’t mean that the government has a right to
eliminate all competitors and force the consumer to
purchase from only a government agency. If a thief
steals your watch, outlaws all other forms of telling
time, tells you the time, and then demands that you
pay him for providing you with this service, would you
consider yourself obligated to pay him? Of course not.
Similarly, the voluntaryist holds that the government
should not be providing any services in the first place
(any more than the thief should have stolen your watch
or outlawed would-be competitors). When government
uses coercion to enforce its will, many problematic
situations arise. Voluntaryists try to resolve them by
abandoning government, and using private services
when available and affordable.
Footnotes
[1] Murray Rothbard, “Yes,” REASON Magazine, May 1973, pp.
19, 23-25, and reprinted in Carl Watner (ed.), I MUST SPEAK
OUT, San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes (1999), pp. 47-48.
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[2] G. E. Aylmer (ed.), THE LEVELLERS IN THE ENGLISH
REVOLUTION, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1975), p. 68.
[3] ibid., p. 80.
[4] ibid., p. 68.
[5] George H. Smith, “Nineteenth-Century Opponents of State
Education,” in Robert B. Everhart (ed.), THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
MONOPOLY, Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing (1982), pp.
109-144 at pp. 121-124.
[6] Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN, OR LIFE IN THE WOODS
and ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, with an
Afterword by Perry Miller, New York: New American Library
(Twenty-first printing, 1960), p. 233.
[7] ibid., pp. 222, 223, 232.
[8] Carl Watner (ed.), A VOLUNTARY POLITICAL GOVERNMENT: LETTERS FROM CHARLES LANE, St. Paul: Michael
E. Coughlin, Publisher (1982), p. 52.
[9] Albert Jay Nock, MEMOIRS OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN,
New York: Harper and Brothers (1943), p. 307.
[10] Robert Ringer, RESTORING THE AMERICAN DREAM,
New York: QED (1979), p. 135.
[11] Lysander Spooner, NATURAL LAW; OR THE SCIENCE
OF JUSTICE (Section I), Boston: A. Williams & Co. (1882), p. 6
in Volume I, Charles Shively (ed.), THE COLLECTED WORKS
OF LYSANDER SPOONER IN SIX VOLUMES, Weston: M &
S Press (1971).
[12] Ringer, op. cit., p. 134.
[13] James Bryce, Volume II, THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH (original publication date 1888), New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons (1959), p. 494. (This is found in the Capricorn
Books edition, edited by Louis M. Hacker in Volume II, Part
VI, Chapter 4, “The Influence of Religion,” paragraph 15.) Also
see Carl Watner, “The Most Generous Nation on Earth: Voluntaryism and American Philanthropy,” Whole Number 61, THE
VOLUNTARYIST (April 1993).
[14] See Gabriel Roth (ed.), STREET SMART: COMPETITION,
ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND THE FUTURE OF ROADS,
New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006 on both a
discussion of for-profit roads and government inefficiencies
in this area.
Other References
Etienne de la Boetie, THE POLITICS OF OBEDIENCE, New
York: Free Life Press (1975) and Montreal: Black Rose Books
(2007).
Brian Doherty, RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, New York: Public Affairs (2007).
Robert LeFevre, THE FUNDAMENTALS OF LIBERTY,
Santa Anna: Rampart Institute (1988).
Eric Mack (ed.), THE RIGHT AND WRONG OF COMPULSION BY THE STATE AND OTHER ESSAYS BY AUBERON
HERBERT, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics (1978).
Jim Payne (Count Nef), PRINCESS NAVINA VISITS VOLUNTARIA, Sandpoint: Lytton Publishing (2002).
Murray Rothbard, FOR A NEW LIBERTY, New York: The
Macmillan Company (1973).
Mark Spangler (ed.), CLICHES OF POLITICS, Irvingtonon-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education (1996). Earlier
editions were titled “Cliches of Socialism.” This anthology dispels
many of the myths that justify the pleas for political solutions
to our social problems.
Carl Watner with Wendy McElroy (eds.), NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS: ESSAYS IN OPPOSITION, Jefferson:
McFarland & Company (2004).
“If you can’t be thankful for what you receive, be thankful for what you escape.”
Page 7
ing. The presence of other men makes the division of
labor and specialization in production possible, but it
does not essentially change the nature of the world.
When man lives alone on an island, and when there
is no interaction with others, the question of justice
does not arise.
However, in the context of human society, justice,
for the voluntaryist, is a negative duty. It consists in
respecting other people’s bodies and property, and in
doing them no physical harm. For the voluntaryist,
justice does not imply any special obligation of benevolence or charity. Nothing is due a man in strict
justice but what is his own. Perhaps he may have
an ethical duty towards helping others; either their
merits or their sufferings may reasonably lead them
to expect something from others which is not strictly
their own. As Lysander Spooner pointed out, “Man,
no doubt, owes many other ... duties to his fellow
men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, ...
. But these are simply ... duties, of which each man
must be his own judge, in each particular case, as
to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will,
perform them.” [11]
As for considering the justice of forced charity,
Robert Ringer explained, “I do not believe that I or
any other person has the right to force other men to be
charitable. In other words, I am not against charity,
but I am against the use of force.” [12] The fact that
someone thinks others are not contributing enough
to charity or to the poor is no justification for forcing
them to contribute more. If a man has legitimately
earned his property, it is theft to take it from him
against his will for any purpose. One man’s honestly
earned wealth is not another man’s entitlement (nor
the cause of another’s impoverishment). We might
not like one person being rich and another being poor,
but it is not our right to take from one and give to
another. If we think the poor are too poor, then we
may devote more of our own resources and property
to them, and we also may try to persuade others to
do so. What we may not do is place someone in jail
because he refuses to abide by our dictates in the
matter; we may not pass a law that, in effect, does
the same thing; and we may not use the plight of
the poor as a justification for stealing the property
of others, even if, after the fact, we give the stolen
property to the poor.
The Practical Perspective
Americans have often been referred to as the most
generous people on earth. Although there has never
been a true voluntaryist society, America, from its
colonial roots to the early 20th Century, more closely
approximated voluntaryist parameters than many
other nations. What did we find happening in such
circumstances?
In early America, private and community care for
the poor often preceded government’s assumption of
those responsibilities. If Americans wanted a school,
a library, an orphanage, or a hospital they simply
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built it for themselves. The vitality and success of
American communities rested on their voluntary
nature. History and theory demonstrate that a free
people produce many more goods and services than
their counterparts in a centrally organized economy.
Thus, there is more to go around in a free society, and
the poor there generally have a higher standard of
living than the poor in a collectivist society. This economic largess is largely the result of the investment
in tools and individual savings which are promoted
by the free market economy.
Not only were there probably fewer “poor” in
America, but those of the lower classes were able
to better care for themselves and their poorer kin.
Until the advent of State welfare in the early 20th
Century, mutual aid societies, church and fraternal
organizations flourished. By 1920, about 18 million Americans belonged to some type of mutual
aid society or fraternal order, which often provided
some form of health, disability, and death benefits
to their members. With the advent of the Great Depression (which voluntaryists assert was caused by
government financial policies), government welfare
programs began crowding out private efforts.
“Anarchism is founded on the observation
that since few men are wise enough to rule
themselves, even fewer are wise enough to
rule others.”
—Edward Abbey, A VOICE CRYING
IN THE WILDERNESS (1989), Chapter 3, p. 23.
The private sector in America has not only proved
itself capable of producing and creating large amounts
of wealth, but it has also demonstrated its willingness to contribute to community causes and helping
the poor. The record of American philanthropy is so
impressive that it would require several books to list
its achievements. So when one asks, “What would
happen to the poor in a free society?” one only has
to look at American history for an answer. As James
Bryce writing in 1888 observed, “In works of active
beneficence, no country has surpassed, perhaps none
has equaled the United States.” [13]
Objection 2: The voluntaryist insight points out that
the State depends on the cooperation of its citizens.
Aren’t these citizens showing by their actions that they
are consenting to the government they have?
Answer: Yes, citizens may obey their governments,
but they are no more consenting to their “voluntary”
enslavement than a victim of a robbery consents
to his victimization. The victim of a robbery (your
money or your life) “voluntarily” hands over his wallet to prevent a worse occurrence (his own death).
When governments eliminate criminal penalties for
failure to file and pay taxes, we can begin looking at
how much real support governments might obtain
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Voluntaryism
continued from page 1
other free-market anarchists is their stance on strategy; especially their reliance on nonviolence and nonelectoral means to achieve a free society. Like many
European and American anarchists during the 19th
and 20th Centuries, voluntaryists shun involvement
with electoral politics. Rejection of the political means
is premised on the insight that governments depend
on the cooperation of those they rule. Etienne de la
Boetie, a mid-16th Century Frenchmen, who was the
first to point out this voluntaryist insight, called for
peaceful non-cooperation and non-violent resistance
to the State. Despite the advocacy of violence by a
number of anarchists throughout history, most anarchists have sought to persuade people, rather than
coerce them. Le Boetie’s call for peaceful resistance
has been echoed by contemporary anarchists, as well
as by a significant number of those who have been
described as near-anarchist in their thinking, such
as Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi.
Origins
Voluntaryism has a long and rich historical tradition in the English-speaking world. Its heritage
can be traced at least as far back as the Leveller
movement of mid-17th Century England. The Levellers can be best identified by their spokesmen
John Lilburne (?1614-1657) and Richard Overton
(?1600-?1660s) who “clashed with the Presbyterian
puritans, who wanted to preserve a state-church with
coercive powers and to deny liberty of worship to the
puritan sects.” [2]
The Levellers were nonconformist religious types
who agitated for the separation of church and state.
During the late 16th and 17th Centuries, the church
covenant was a common means of organizing the
radical religious sects. The church, to their way of
thinking, was a voluntary association of equals. To
both the Levellers and later thinkers this furnished
a powerful theoretical and practical model for the
civil state. If it was proper for their church congregations to be based on consent, then it was proper
to apply the same principle of consent to its secular
counterpart. For example, the Leveller ‘large’ Petition of 1647 contained a proposal “that tythes and
all other inforced maintenances, may be for ever
abolished, and nothing in place thereof imposed, but
that all Ministers may be payd only by those who
voluntarily choose them, and contract with them for
their labours.” [3] One only need substitute “taxes”
for “tythes” and “government officials” for “Ministers”
to see how close the Levellers were to the idea of a
voluntary state.
The Levellers also held tenaciously to the idea of
self-proprietorship. As Richard Overton wrote: “No
man hath power over my rights and liberties, and
I over no mans [sic].” [4] They realized that it was
impossible to assert one’s private right of judgment in
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religious matters (what we would call today, liberty
of conscience) without upholding the same right for
everyone else, even the unregenerate. The existence
of a State church in England has caused continuous
friction since the time of the Levellers because there
were always those conscientious objectors who either
opposed its religious doctrine and/or their forced
contributions towards its support.
Voluntaryists also became involved in another
controversy in England, from about the mid-1840s
to the mid-1860s. In 1843, Parliament considered
legislation which would require part-time compulsory
attendance at school of those children working in
factories. The effective control over these schools was
to be placed in the hands of the established Church
of England, and the schools were to be supported
largely from funds raised out of local taxation. Nonconformists, mostly Baptists and Congregationalists,
became alarmed. They had been under the ban of the
law for more than a century. At one time or another
they could not be married in their own churches,
were compelled to pay church rates against their
will, and had to teach their children underground for
fear of arrest. They became known as voluntaryists
because they consistently rejected all state aid and
interference in education, just as they rejected the
state in the religious sphere of their lives. Three of
the most notable voluntaryists included the young
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who published his first
series of articles “The Proper Sphere of Government,”
beginning in 1842; Edward Baines, Jr., (1800-1890)
editor and proprietor of the LEEDS MERCURY; and
Edward Miall (1809-1881), Congregationalist minister, and founder-editor of THE NONCONFORMIST
(1841), who wrote VIEWS OF THE VOLUNTARY
PRINCIPLE (1845).
The educational voluntaryists wanted free trade
in education, just as they supported free trade in corn
or cotton. Their concern “for liberty can scarcely be
exaggerated.” They believed that “government would
employ education for its own ends” (teaching habits of
obedience and indoctrination), and that governmentcontrolled schools would ultimately teach children to
rely on the State for all things. Baines, for example,
noted that “[w]e cannot violate the principles of
liberty in regard to education without furnishing at
once a precedent and inducement to violate them in
regard to other matters.” Baines conceded that the
then current system of education (both private and
charitable) had deficiencies, but he argued that freedom should not be abridged on that account. Should
freedom of the press be compromised because we have
bad newspapers? “I maintain that Liberty is the chief
cause of excellence; but it would cease to be Liberty
if you proscribed everything inferior.” [5]
Although educational voluntaryism failed to stop
the movement for compulsory schools in England,
voluntaryism as a political creed was revived during
the 1880s by another Englishman, Auberon Herbert
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(1838-1906). Herbert served a two-year term in
the House of Commons, but after meeting Herbert
Spencer in 1874, decided not to run for re-election.
He wrote “State Education: A Help or Hindrance?”
in 1880, and began using the word “voluntaryist” to
label his advocacy of “voluntary” taxation. He began
publishing his journal, THE FREE LIFE (Organ
of Voluntary Taxation and the Voluntary State) in
1890. Herbert was not a pure voluntaryist because,
although he held that it was possible for state revenues to be generated by offering competitive services
on the free market, he continued to advocate a single
monopolistic state for every given geographic territory. Some of his essays are titled “The Principles of
Voluntaryism and Free Life” (1897), and “A Plea for
Voluntaryism,” (posthumously, 1908).
Earlier and Contemporary Usage in America
Although there was never an explicit “voluntaryist” movement in America till the late 20th Century,
earlier Americans did agitate for the disestablishment of government-supported churches in several
of the original thirteen States. These conscientious
objectors believed mere birth in a given geographic
area did not mean that one consented to membership
or automatically wished to support a State church.
Their objection to taxation in support of the church
was two-fold: taxation not only gave the State some
right of control over the church; it also represented
a way of coercing the non-member or the unbeliever
into supporting the church. In New England, where
both Massachusetts and Connecticut started out
with state churches, many people believed that
they needed to pay a tax for the general support of
religion - for the same reasons they paid taxes to
maintain the roads and the courts. It was simply
inconceivable to many of them that society could
long exist without state support of religion. Practically no one comprehended the idea that although
governmentally-supplied goods and services (such
as roads, or schools, or churches) might be essential
to human welfare, it was not necessary that they be
provided by the government.
There were at least two well-known Americans
who espoused voluntaryist causes during the mid19th Century. Henry David Thoreau’s (1817-1862)
first brush with the law in his home state of Massachusetts came in 1838, when he turned twentyone. The State demanded that he pay the one dollar
ministerial tax, in support of a clergyman, “whose
preaching my father attended but never I myself.”
[6] When Thoreau refused to pay the tax, it was probably paid by one of his aunts. In order to avoid the
ministerial tax in the future, Thoreau had to sign
an affidavit attesting he was not a member of the
church.
Thoreau’s famous overnight imprisonment for his
failure to pay another municipal tax, the poll tax,
to the town of Concord was recorded in his essay,
“Resistance to Civil Government,” first published
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in 1849. It is often referred to as “On the Duty of
Civil Disobedience,” because in it he recognized that
government was dependent on the cooperation of its
citizens. While he was not a thoroughly consistent
voluntaryist, he did write that he wished never to
“rely on the protection of the State,” and that he
refused to tender it his allegiance so long as it supported slavery. He distinguished himself from “those
who call[ed] themselves no-government men”: “I ask
for, not at once no government, but at once a better
government,” conveniently overlooking the fact that
improving an institution does not change its essential
(in this case, coercive) nature. Despite this, Thoreau
opened his essay by stating his belief that “That
government is best which governs not at all,” a point
which all voluntaryists heartily embrace. [7]
One of those “no-government men” was William
Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), famous abolitionist and
publisher of THE LIBERATOR. Nearly all abolitionists identified with the self-ownership principle, that
each person - as an individual - owned and should
control his or her own mind and body free of outside
coercive interference. The abolitionist called for the
immediate and unconditional cessation of slavery
because they saw slavery as man-stealing in its most
direct and worst form. Slavery reflected the theft of
a person’s self-ownership rights (just as taxes reflect
the theft of a person’s property). The slave was a chattel with no rights of its own. The abolitionists realized
that each human being, man, woman, and child, was
naturally invested with sovereignty over him or her
self and that no one could exercise forcible control
over another without breaching the self-ownership
principle. Garrison, too, was not a pure voluntaryist for he supported the federal government’s war
against the States from 1861 to 1865.
“[N]o human is saintly enough to be entrusted with total power over another.”
—David Brion Davis, INHUMAN
BONDAGE (2006), p. 198.
Probably the most consistent voluntaryist of that
era was Charles Lane (1800-1870). He was friendly
with Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and Thoreau. Between January and June 1843 a series of nine letters he penned were published in such
abolitionist papers as THE LIBERATOR and THE
HERALD OF FREEDOM. The title under which they
were published was “A Voluntary Political Government,” and in them Lane described the State in terms
of institutionalized violence and referred to its “club
law, its mere brigand right of a strong arm, [supported] by guns and bayonets.” He saw the coercive
State on par with “forced” Christianity. “Everyone
can see that the church is wrong when it comes to
men with the [B]ible in one hand, and the sword in
the other.” “Is it not equally diabolical for the State
to do so?” Lane believed that governmental rule was
2nd Quarter 2009
only tolerated by public opinion because the fact was
not yet recognized that all the true purposes of the
State could be carried out on the voluntary principle,
just as churches could be sustained voluntarily. Reliance on the voluntary principle could only come about
through “kind, orderly, and moral means” that were
consistent with the totally voluntary society he was
advocating. “Let us have a voluntary State as well as
a voluntary Church, and we may possibly then have
some claim to the appeallation of free men.” [8]
Late 20th and early 21st Century libertarians
readily appreciate the parallel between the disestablishment of State churches and the abandonment
of the State itself. Although the label “voluntaryist”
practically died out after the death of Auberon Herbert, its use was renewed in late 1982, when George
Smith, Wendy McElroy, and Carl Watner began publishing THE VOLUNTARYIST. George Smith suggested use of the term to identify those libertarians
who believed that political action and political parties
(especially the Libertarian Party) were antithetical
to their ideas. In their “Statement of Purpose” in
NEITHER BULLETS NOR BALLOTS: Essays on
Voluntaryism (1983), Watner, Smith, and McElroy
explained that voluntaryists were advocates of nonpolitical strategies to achieve a free society. They
rejected electoral politics “in theory and practice as
incompatible with libertarian goals,” and explained
that political methods invariably strengthen the
legitimacy of coercive governments. In concluding
their “Statement of Purpose” they wrote: “Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through
education, and we advocate the withdrawal of the
cooperation and tacit consent on which state power
ultimately depends.”
THE VOLUNTARYIST newsletter, which began
publication in late 1982, is one of the longest-lived
libertarian publications in the world. Edited and
published by Carl Watner since 1986, the most
significant articles from the first 100 issues were
anthologized in book-length form and published as I
MUST SPEAK OUT: The Best of THE VOLUNTARYIST 1982-1999 (Carl Watner, ed., San Francisco: Fox
& Wilkes, 1999).
Another voluntaryist anthology buttressed the
case for non-voting: Carl Watner with Wendy McElroy (eds.), DISSENTING ELECTORATE: Those Who
Refuse to Vote and the Legitimacy of Their Opposition (Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2001). The
masthead of THE VOLUNTARYIST, perhaps, best
epitomizes the voluntaryist outlook: “If one takes
care of the means, the end will take care of itself.”
This statement penned by Gandhi emphasizes that
the world can only be changed one person at a time,
and then, only if that person wills it. The only thing
that the individual can do “is present society with
‘one improved unit’.” As Albert Jay Nock put it,
“[A]ges of experience testify that the only way society
can be improved is by the individualist method ...,
2nd Quarter 2009
that is, the method of each ‘one’ doing his very best to
improve ‘one’.” This is the quiet, peaceful, patient way
of changing society because it concentrates on bettering the character of men and women as individuals.
As the individual units change, the improvement
of society will take care of itself. In other words, “if
one take care of the means, the end will take care
of itself.” [9]
Objections to Voluntaryism
Introductory and General Observations:
Voluntaryists meet objections to their doctrine by
examining them from both the moral and practical
viewpoint. From the moral side, they ask whose property is involved, has anyone’s consent been obtained,
is any property being used against the owner’s will?
From the practical side, they ask how would the
situation be handled in a statist society, how is it
being handled now, how might it be addressed in the
absence of government intervention? Voluntaryists
also realize that some social ills will always be with
us. Nonetheless they ask, of the two ways to organize human society, voluntarily versus coercively,
which system is likely to produce less harm, be most
beneficial to people, and be more consistent with our
commonly accepted ethical norms?
Voluntaryists recognize that normally the most
moral behavior achieves the most practical results. In
certain emergency or “life boat” situations there may
be a tension between what appears to be the moral
and the practical. In such cases, some voluntaryists
may choose to act contrary to their principles, while
others may remain true to them and suffer the consequences. However, in both cases voluntaryists continue to recognize that self-ownership, homesteading,
and non-aggression are the basis of their doctrine,
and “that human freedom is a higher moral objective than the arbitrary fulfillment of certain people’s
needs and desires.” [10]
Objection 1: What would happen to the poor in a
voluntaryist world?
The plight of the poor in a free society focuses on
many of the major objections to voluntaryism. From
the practical side, who would care for them? (Any
one who wants to devote their time, energy, and
resources to them.) Would they be left to starve?
(Yes, they might be if there was no one willing to
help them.) What ultimately is our responsibility
toward our fellow man, whether he be better off or
worse off than others? (Strict justice consists in not
acting invasively toward others.) Do the poor have
a right to alms? (No, according to the homesteading
axiom the rightfully owned property of others is to
be respected, not stolen.)
The Moral Perspective
The first fact we must recognize is that nature is
niggardly and that goods and services of value are
scarce. Left alone on an island, how does a man care
for himself? Man only survives by using his mind and
body to provide himself with food, shelter, and clothPage 5